Spring Break in Taiwan: Tainan's 400th Anniversary

I woke up in my host family’s apartment to the rising sun and Taichung skyline. Despite initial superficial similarities, this city is very different from Gaoxiong. For one, there are so many more cars. Where I lived in downtown Gaoxiong, very few people had cars—most rode mopeds or public transport and parking lots were nonexistent (as weird as that sounds). It makes me wonder what plays into cities being built to accommodate cars vs public transport. Most cities I’ve seen in the US are car cities. But Taiwan is much smaller than the US and it’s super interesting to see such a small country have cities built with such different transit goals. In Taichung, I’ve only seen a few bus stops, the roads are wider, and there are actual parking lots. Parking lots!

 

Road trip!!

The stars seem to have aligned perfectly for this trip, because at 9am our host family told us the plan was to move to another city for the weekend to see the local once-a-year lantern festival and celebrate the 400th anniversary of the city. So Simone and I packed up our temporary setup and headed to our new, more temporary home in the historic heart of Taiwan, Tainan. I actually was briefly in Tainan for NSIL-Y last summer, where we visited the oldest Confucius temple in Taiwan. Beyond that, we didn’t venture far into the city, so I was excited to see more.


Breakfast on the way to Tainan was 燒餅油條, a dish made of my favorite Taiwanese bread, youtiao, wrapped in scallions, sweet and sour hot sauce with chili chips, and a sesame wrapped pastry. Every type of person waited in line with us—from people in suits, to pajamas, and day clothes. We made a pit stop to introduce Simone to the amazing Taiwanese 7-11s (“they’re so clean”). Back on the road, our host mom’s playlist is a mix of romantic Chinese rock, Imagine Dragons, a bunch of rap songs Tyler loves (think kid LAROI, Stay, Mood), and American pop from the 2010s.

Youtiao breakfast stop!!

After arriving at our home-away-from-home-away-from-home, I ate my new favorite Taiwanese fruit, wax apples (fun fact: native to Malaysia), and watched Simone and Rex play basketball, and later, horse. Some things transcend language.

Mochi/red bean paste, wax apples, ba la (guava)

Before hitting the town and lantern festival, I should mention the weather. I’ve been living under the assumption that not only is all Taiwanese weather the same as the most southern city where I lived last summer, but also in a perpetual state of June heat and humidity. This could not be further from the truth. So I unhappily had to commit the egregious aesthetic sin of socks and sandals.


We were on our way to the festival when, in classic Violet fashion, I realized I had forgotten to tell my NSLI-Y host family I was back in Taiwan. I reached out to them, and coincidentally they were headed to the same area after the lantern festival to visit Tainan’s largest night market. We coordinated (with my broken mandarin failing me, gave the reins to my Taizhong host mom) to meet at the night market after the festival!


An hour out of the festival, we stopped to try a locally delicacy, whose name is long forgotten to me. It was a sort of fishy rice pudding with chunks of pork. Not my cup of tea, but I gave it a shot and mostly ate around the fish goo. My host family implicitly agreed that there’s usually a reason regional delicacies are regional, except for Simone who enjoyed it a lot. I realize again I forgot to take a picture and this time can’t make the excuse that I ate it too fast. Sorry y’all. Next to the festival there was a street side market (really another night market, but instead of in a parking lot like area, it was built into the surrounding streets), where we walked around and ate a ton of Taiwanese desserts (all whose names I don’t know): coffee boba, tiny fluffy chocolate pancakes, strawberries covered in melted sugar, crumbly peanut pastry the texture of baklava, and by far my least favorite, shrimp cakes—which had the same texture as crispy rice waffles with the unfortunately strong flavor of shrimp.

A poor excuse--sorry

Start of the market

Simone (the only other Park student allergic to cats, and therefore we share a host family)!

Streetside market

Munching on deserts, we walked to the cities’ harbor, which looks comfortably like the Baltimore Inner harbor, but cleaner. We then walked through a huge park filled with playgrounds, trees, light up sculptures, and ancient stranger fig trees. Before the festival show, we sat to watch several dance performances, ranging from a quick diablo show to a longer, more interpretive dance which I think was about an identity crisis in the face of extreme culture shock of moving West.

The inner harbor

Light-up park

The festival show was truly a spectacle worth waiting for. It started off with a literal bang, a fireworks show that would have rivaled Fourth of July in Cross and ended with a drone show that made my night and would have made Grandpa Bulldog’s, too.

 

Sunset in Tainan

Lastly, we went to (you guessed it) another night market, the largest in Tainan, where we got dinner and met up with my host family from the summer. The parents immediately hit it off, talking about the program I am in now vs. NSLI-Y. While the kids were shy at first, they ended up warming up and gifted me a Starbucks cup and a new capibara keychain for my bag. Shoutout to An Bo (Ian, one of my NSLI-Y friends), they are so excited for you to return to Taiwan for college and want me to do the same.

Final night market

Back at home, I am super tired, and very happy to be back inside after a long day out. My final note for the day is that my Mandarin really is coming back to me, and I’ve had several moments today where I seemingly pulled phrases and words from nowhere. I’m not sure if it’s Taiwan or the immersion or (hopefully) the food, but there’s something wonderful and satisfying about suddenly remembering how to say “we don’t have to buy more food if you don’t want to”.


Thank you and goodnight, and for most of you, have a good rest of your day!